On May 6, 2014, I was fortunate to be with a group of students, parents, and community members gathered at an auditorium in Grand Rapids, Michigan, to celebrate the first class of “Challenge Scholars”. Many of these students, now in sixth grade, will be the first in their families with an opportunity to attend college. The excitement in the room was palpable. Media, including several local television stations, were on hand to cover the event. As each one of the 137 sixth grade students walked down the stage as their name was called, proud parents looked on in awe.

Eleven million students – more than 45% of the US undergraduate population – are enrolled at community colleges. These institutions play a particularly important role in ensuring that disadvantaged students have access to postsecondary education. While students from the top socioeconomic quartile outnumber students from the bottom quartile 14 to 1 at the most selective universities, students from the bottom quartile outnumber students from the top quartile by nearly 2 to 1 at community colleges (Anthony P. Carnevale and Jeff Strohl, “How Increasing College Access Is Increasing Inequality, and What to Do about It,” in Rewarding Strivers: Helping Low-Income Students Succeed in College). For many students, open access, low cost, and proximity to home makes community colleges the most viable option for postsecondary education.

The Yale School of Management Education Leadership Conference (ELC) recently convened several hundred practitioners, funders, district leaders, and other education stakeholders to discuss some of the most pressing questions facing education reform today. The theme at this year’s conference was “Reframe, Reimagine, Reignite”: to reframe what progress means for education, reimagine the steps to take collectively, and reignite the movement toward a better future. In order to achieve this ambitious conference theme, one topic of conversation that emerged was the importance of collaboration of varying shapes and sizes.

In my previous post, I introduced you to Daphne, a two year old whose experiences at home are risking her healthy development. While there are numerous societal supports for children like Daphne, the lack of coordination between these piecemeal services can lead to major gaps in services. I described this as a case of the Swiss cheese dilemma, in which the vulnerabilities of each support system align like the holes in multiple slices of Swiss cheese, creating an even more gaping hole (if you will let me extend the metaphor) in Daphne’s social safety net. The result: Daphne grows up with insufficient adult interaction, poor healthcare, and delayed cognitive development.